


Say Anything Else

by smallerontheoutside (theinvisiblequestion)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Relationships, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-16 01:43:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3469766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinvisiblequestion/pseuds/smallerontheoutside
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wants to say "I love you" but keeps it to "Goodnight."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say Anything Else

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this gifset](http://abigailkanes.tumblr.com/post/112301373886/he-wants-to-say-i-love-you-but-keeps-it-to) on Tumblr. Oh, my feels.

Abby threw herself into her work after the missile attack. Granted, there were plenty of wounded to tend to, but she worked so much she threatened to single-handedly put Jackson out of a job. Even after the attack on Mt. Weather, Abby worked around the clock, only stopping to sleep when she was too tired to keep her eyes open any more.

Marcus tried to get her to slow down a few times, but she’d just brush past him and keep working, so he did what he could to keep her from running herself into the dirt. He brought her food, even though she rarely stopped to eat it. He made sure she always had water on hand for herself—if she wouldn’t eat, she at least needed to stay hydrated—and sometimes he brought tea from the galley. Chamomile, when it was available; otherwise there was always some kind of mint. And the times she fell asleep at her desk, he got her into her cot and loosened her boots so she’d sleep better (he only ever made the mistake once of taking them all the way off).

He had guard duty the one night she actually went to bed before she passed out. He went to the med bay to check on her before he went out for his rotation, and met her in the hallway outside her office. “Abby?”

“Marcus,” she said tersely. She was always terse these days; it wasn’t directed at him.

“I thought for sure you’d still be in Medical.”

“It’s late; I’m tired.”

“Didn’t stop you before.”

Abby stared at him with that look on her face, and even though it was supposed to be hardened and tough and grumpy, it reminded him of a petulant, willful child. _She_ reminded him of a petulant, willful child, sometimes. “Didn’t I clear you for guard duty?”

“I’m not on for another half hour,” he told her. “I know the schedule.” He offered her a smile weaker than watery tea and stepped out of her way. When she walked past him, he fell into step beside her. They walked in silence to Abby’s quarters, and Marcus only slowed a little when she stopped. “Goodnight, Abby,” he told her, and then he walked away before he said anything else.

* * *

The next night, of course, she worked until Marcus came in at the end of his rotation, when the sky to the east was starting to turn pinkish-gray. “Abby,” he said. He spoke quietly, like he always did with her, partly because he hated the way the sound echoed off the bulkheads of the dead ship, and partly because there was always something he was trying not to say. She was asleep, though, with half a dozen medkits on her desk in various states of disassembly and her head on one arm.

She wasn’t a particularly small person, but she had skipped too many meals and been under too much stress; she was lighter than a woman of her stature and bone structure had any right to be. She voiced a protest when he picked her up, but he ignored her. The hallway was deserted, and no one was around to see him carry her to her quarters.

He loosened her boots, like he always did, and draped a blanket over her. When the blanket settled over her, he pulled it up over her shoulders; he wanted to rest a hand on her shoulder, or her forehead, or her hair, but he did none of those things. He just said goodnight to her and walked away before he said anything else.

* * *

It became a routine. Either Abby went willingly to bed before Marcus’s shift, or she was asleep at her desk by the end of it. He said goodnight to her either way, but nothing more. She was a strong woman, but the part of her that listened to him, the part that heard him when his voice was barely over a whisper, was fragile, maybe even broken. She had loved her daughter more than anything, and she felt deeply betrayed; she also felt guilty, and Marcus knew that guilt all too well. It had been his pushing that had cost four hundred people their lives, and while he knew that they had volunteered and most of them would have died in the Ark crash anyway, knowing those things did not make him feel any better.

So he did not say any of the things he wanted to say. He never talked about Clarke, who was always away at the _Trigedakru_ camp. He never talked about the missile attack or the conversation they’d had underneath the rubble. He never talked about anything, except that she needed to eat, or sleep, or hydrate.

Then, on a day some weeks into the routine, Abby stepped out of Marcus’s expectations, just a little. Instead of mutely accepting his “Goodnight, Abby,” she gave him a grudging “Goodnight, Marcus” in return. He thought about that for most of his rotation, in between thinking about all the other things he usually thought about when he was alone at his post.

Her grudging mumbles got less perfunctory, and she stopped trying to stay up until the end of his shift. She still worked too much and rested too little, but he saw, or he hoped, that she was beginning to heal.

He had not yet said his goodnight when she asked, “Why do you do this?” She didn’t have to say what _this_ was; he knew she meant all of it, not just walking her to her quarters.

But they were at her door, so he just gave her a muted smile and said, “Goodnight, Abby.”

She did not return the sentiment, so he turned and walked away before he said anything else.

* * *

The festival was the first thing that broke the routine. There had been weeks of quiet, of peace, and then Clarke walked through the gate and announced that there was going to be a party. Since there wasn’t enough space for either group to host the party, however, they had it in the big field outside Camp Jaha. There were bonfires and music and food and drinks and plenty of wine and moonshine. Abby stalwartly refused to attend for a moment longer than was necessary, and even then she refused to take part in anything, except the half-full cup of wine Marcus brought her, which tasted better than Monty’s moonshine.

She liked the wine, though, and she had two or three cups of it before she declared herself done with celebrating. Marcus walked with her, not because he thought she needed an escort, but because he wanted to make sure she didn’t try to dive into her work again.

She didn’t.

She had gotten caught up talking to a couple of _Trikru_ women about a health question which their healer had apparently not had an answer to, so by the time they started back to camp, the wine had made her unsteady on her feet. The moon was only a sliver in the sky, and the starlight wasn’t enough to see by, so Abby tripped on just about everything. The first time Abby stumbled, Marcus extended his arm as an offer of support, and she refused it. The fourth time, she linked her arm with his. She didn’t stop tripping over things, but she stayed upright more easily.

They said nothing on the walk back to the gate; Abby because she had nothing to say, and Marcus because he had too much to say.

Abby tripped on the little rise between the ground and the metal floor of the station’s hallway, and even though she caught herself, she overbalanced and went teetering backward. If not for Marcus, she would have ended up on her ass in the dirt. As it was, she was pressed against him, spine to sternum, and he had a hand on each of her arms. He thought maybe it might have been wiser to let her fall.

“Come on,” he said with all the control of the quiet, even tone he always used with her, “you need to get to bed.” He pushed her away from him and released his hold on her arms. Once, weeks ago, the act might have felt like effort; now, it was only enough effort to remind him that it was still there.

He guided her down the hallway, steadying her when she swayed, or tripped over the uneven floor or her own feet. A few people were still at camp, those who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, attend the party in the big field, but the ship itself was empty. Their footfalls echoed along the bulkheads. When they stopped outside Abby’s quarters, he said, “Goodnight, Abby.”

“Goodnight, Marcus.” She looked back at him after she said it, before she closed her door, and added, “Thank you.”

He walked away before he said anything else.

* * *

The second interruption happened after Clarke announced that she had made the decision to return to the dropship and rebuild the camp there, separate from Camp Jaha. Most of the kids who had come out of Mt. Weather followed her and Bellamy, as did a few people who had come down in the Ark. As the kids began to march out of the camp, bleary-eyed and still half-asleep, Clarke came to Marcus, who was watching from the crashed ship’s main entrance.

He didn’t have to ask if she was ready to go off on her own; she had kept almost half of the original group of kids alive with littlehelp from the Council and the rest of the Ark. He nodded to her. “If you need anything, you’re always welcome back here.”

Clarke gave him a little laugh. “Thanks, Kane, but I think we’ll be okay. It’s not like we’re cutting ourselves off; there’s just not room for everyone here.”

“I know.” He gave her a muted smile. “The sentiment still stands.” He meant Clarke specifically; she was so like her mother, stubborn and too independent.

Clarke’s expression grew serious then. “Kane, take care of my mom, will you?”

“Of course,” he answered immediately. Did she think he would suddenly stop taking care of his people?

“You know what I mean,” she said, picking the thoughts right off his face. “She listens to you. She trusts you. Take care of her. Please.”

He nodded, and Clarke walked away, following her people out of the gates. He watched the way she offered help to anyone who needed it, even though it slowed her down and meant she was walking at the back of the pack. Whatever her decisions during the war on Mt. Weather, Clarke was a good leader, a caring leader—a better leader than he had been, for his brief tenancy as chancellor.

When the group of kids had been swallowed by the treeline, Marcus went to Medical to see if Abby felt like eating breakfast. He found her alone in the med bay, without a single patient to speak of, curled up in the corner of her tiny office. She was crying; she stopped, or tried to, when she heard Marcus walk in, but her eyes were red-rimmed and her breathing had a forced kind of evenness.

He sat on the floor next to her. “I came to see if you wanted breakfast,” he tells her.

“Are they gone?” she asked, her voice shaking against her will.

He nodded.

Abby looked at him with the most vulnerable, pathetic expression, and his self-control failed him just enough for him to take her hand and give it a gentle, sympathetic squeeze. Abby’s self-control, in turn, failed completely, and she started to cry again. As far as he knew, she hadn’t cried since they had pulled him from the rubble of Tondc. She tried to calm herself, to swallow her tears and her feelings, but Marcus heard Clarke telling him to take care of her mother, so he put a hand on Abby’s shoulder.

“It’s okay,” he told her, and with the lightest tug on her shoulder, let her know that she could cry on his.

She shook her head, still trying to wrap herself back up into her steel casing.

“Abby,” he said. “It’s _okay_.”

She tried one more time, one more shaking inhale, before she gave up and let him hold her while she cried herself out. His arms settled around her, and he sat as still as he could until her sobs faded and her tears dried up. He realized then that she had stayed awake through his shift, and she had stopped crying because she had fallen asleep.

When he laid her on her bed, she mumbled something he didn’t quite catch, but he settled a blanket over her and loosened her boots and she went right back to sleep. “Goodnight, Abby,” he said, and then, because she was asleep and his meticulous control was slipping, he placed a very light, very brief kiss on her forehead.

He walked away before he said anything else, and prayed to any forces of the universe that might be listening that she had actually been asleep.

* * *

More weeks passed, and summer came upon them and it was hot. Abby treated more cases of heat exhaustion in a given day than any other ailment in a week. Marcus made doubly sure she kept hydrated, and when it got too hot in the metal hulk of the dead ship, he pulled anyone he could find to build a medical tent. When Abby heard about the project—after it was already up and waiting for supplies and furnishings—she told Marcus that Medical didn’t need a tent, but when they suffered a heat wave the following week, she saw the wisdom in it.

The kids at the dropship camp called during the heat wave, frantic, just after sundown. Raven was on the radio, begging someone to answer her; Marcus had been stationed nearest the radio, and when he answered, she said, “We need Abby.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Clarke tried to explain it to me, but I’m not a medic. Look, just—we need Abby. As soon as you can get here.”

“Okay. We’re on our way.” Marcus told another guard he had to leave, and instructed the man to find someone to sit at his post until daybreak. Then he went to the medical tent; Abby had made her bunk in a little lean-to at the back of the tent, and that was where he found her, laying awake on her bed in a thin t-shirt and a pair of shorts. “Abby, we need to go to the dropship.”

“What?”

“There’s been an emergency.” Marcus handed her the portable radio. She changed while she talked, and Marcus looked anywhere but her until she was dressed. She was exchanging jargon with Clarke, getting information about the situation and giving her daughter advice, and nothing on her face or in her tone suggested any feeling on her part aside from the clinical compulsion to know as much of the situation as possible. When she was done getting the report, she handed the radio back to Marcus and got her medical bag.

From what he understood, there had been an accident at the dropship, and someone was in very bad shape. With Marcus’s flashlight and Abby’s determination, they made good time, and arrived at the dropship camp before sunrise. Abby went straight to the dropship—barely recognizable now that it was covered in mud—but Marcus went to the circle of lanterns, where Bellamy was talking to some of the other kids.

“Thanks for coming down,” Bellamy said. His face spoke worry, and Marcus asked what had happened. “It was a stupid accident,” Bellamy answered. “We were trying to finish mudding the dropship; one of the workers fell.”

Spinal injury. “Abby knows what she’s doing.”

“I know. That’s why we called.”

They sat in the little circle until the sun rose, and then Bellamy left to get the day’s work portioned out. Marcus went to check on Abby, mostly out of habit, and found her covering a girl’s face with a sheet. They were alone in the dropship; everyone who had been helping Abby had left. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“I couldn’t save her,” Abby said dully. Her voice echoed in her mouth, an audible sign of how hard she was trying to distance herself. “Maybe if I had gotten to her sooner, or if I had a full surgical suite…”

“We have what we have. It was an accident; you did what you could.”

Abby glanced at the covered body on the table. “She was just a kid. Couldn’t have been more than fifteen.”

“She grew up,” Marcus said. “They all have.”

Abby turned away from the table, picked up her medical bag, and slung it across her body. “Let’s go.”

“Now? It’s daylight, and we’re in the middle of a heat wave.”

“I don’t want to stay here.”

Marcus wanted to point out that it would be safer if they waited until dark, or at least late afternoon, to avoid risking heat exhaustion, but he just nodded mutely. Marcus found Bellamy, to let him know what had happened and to ask if he could spare a couple of old rags so Marcus could at least try to keep himself and Abby cool on the way back.

“Yeah. There’s a storage shed by the gate. Take what you need.”

“Where’s Clarke?” Abby asked. Had she not been working with her daughter all night? Marcus realized he hadn’t seen Clarke at all.

“She’s asleep,” Bellamy said. “There wasn’t anything else she could do for Terra unless her condition changed, so I sent her to bed. She’s been awake for almost two days.”

Abby’s expression told Marcus that she was trying to decide what she’d rather berate Bellamy for more, so he put a hand on Abby’s shoulder. “That’s all right. We should get going before it gets too much later.”

Marcus endured Abby’s cold silence for an hour, and then the sun was beating through the trees and baking everything. It was getting muggy now, and Marcus’s shirt stuck to him. He poured water from his canteen onto one of the rags and tied it around his head, hoping to keep cool. Abby did the same, making it clear in her posture that she was only doing it because it was the sensible thing to do.

By the time they reached the watering hole halfway back to Camp Jaha, it was too hot to keep walking.

“We can’t stop,” Abby said. “We have to get back to camp.”

“Abby, everyone’s resting. We should rest, too.” He gestured toward the watering hole. “There’s shade here, and water. If we keep walking, we’re going to seriously risk a heat casualty.”

She gave him her petulant-child glare, but followed him to the watering hole anyway. He dropped his pack next to a tree and waded ankle-deep into the water. Abby looked reluctant to go in the water, like there might be flesh-eating piranhas or mutant leeches.

“Come on,” he said, smiling at her. The sun made the rocks so bright he had to squint to see her. She left her pack next to his and stood at the edge of the water, so the tiny waves lapped at the toes of her boots, not even deep enough to get her shoes wet.

“Are you sure it’s safe?”

“I’m sure,” he told her, and she took a step forward, and then another.

“How deep is it?”

“Not very. The kids tell me they can stand in the middle.” He waded in up to his waist; the water wasn’t that cold, but the temperature change was a shock when it finally soaked through his jeans and his underwear. Abby was still standing ankle deep, the hems of her jeans turning dark from the water. He dipped a hand into the water and flicked some at her. 

She yelped. “Marcus!”

He laughed. “Come on, Abby. It’s very refreshing.” He stepped backward, deeper into the water, and sank down into a crouch until the water came up to his neck.

Abby waded in slowly, but he saw the relief grow in her posture, the set of her shoulders, the lines of her face. She went as far as her shoulders, crouching a little at the deepest part of the pool. Her braid floated on top of the water, wicking water upward to her neck; the ends of the rag did the same. “Okay,” she admitted. “It’s not bad.” And then she flicked water at Marcus.

He crouched a little further, until the water came up to his ears, and started to circle around her. He splashed her again, and her eyebrows drew together in a scowl. She saw what he was doing, and she wasn’t going to play with him. She was an adult.

Well, at least he’d tried. He sat in the shallows, where he could lean back on his hands and not drown. There was no shade over the water at this hour, but it felt so nice. Abby sat next to him, pulling her knees up. “We shouldn’t stay in the sun for too long,” she said. “Radiation resistance or no, we still get sunburnt.”

“You’re right,” he said, but he didn’t make any move to get up. He was looking at her, remembering a girl with a younger face and a shorter braid, more years ago than he cared to count. He had loved her then, too, but he had been too embarrassed to say so, and then they had grown up, and he had forgotten that he loved her. He had forgotten that he loved anyone, too focused on keeping the Ark and humankind alive, and had lost himself along the way. She had helped him find it, whether she meant to or not. He loved her now, differently and in the same way, but he kept it to himself because it wasn’t what she needed.

She let go of her knees, and he thought she was going to get up, but she turned to face him instead. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said, but he remembered watching the moon rise and saying the same thing. He had wanted to kiss her then; now, he wanted to just hold her, and would have settled for sitting shoulder to shoulder. It was juvenile and pathetic, he knew, which helped him keep it to himself.

He was not a convincing liar, apparently. “Marcus,” she said, and tilted her head the way she did when she knew she was being lied to.

“It’s not important,” he amended.

Her expression didn’t change in the slightest.

“Abby, please.”

Still nothing.

He sighed. “If you really want to know, I was thinking about a girl I knew on the Ark, when I was a boy.”

“Oh.” She looked dismayed.

“She was smart, and kind, and she cared about everyone. I loved her, although I don’t think she knew it.” He gave Abby a sad smile. “And then we grew up. Apart.” He shrugged.

“What happened to her?” Abby asked, and her inflection told him she had no idea who he was talking about.

It would have been wiser to lie, to say he didn’t know, or she had died in the Arkfall. It would have been wiser to say anything other than what he said: “I made her chancellor.”

Abby blinked, and for a moment he thought she might confuse his meaning—he had, after all, played a part in Diana Sydney’s election to the seat—but then her expression changed, and she shifted where she sat. “Marcus—“

“It was a long time ago,” he said.

She leaned forward, walked her hands toward him through the water, and kissed his cheek.

His meticulous self-control chose that moment to find somewhere else to be. He caught her before she could get too far away, and drew her back toward him. He had to reach up on the fingertips of his other hand to press his lips to hers, but he did it anyway, just long enough to learn that she was not, as she would have others believe, made of hard steel. “You’re right,” he said, dropping his hand back into the water and letting her go. “We should get out of the sun.” He got up and walked away, into the shade, before he said anything else.

* * *

Their routine went back to normal after that. They didn’t talk about the watering hole. The weather remained stiflingly hot, but the heat wave passed and they learned to deal with the summer sun. There was another party on the summer solstice, again in the field outside the camp, and this time Abby didn’t have to be coerced into going. Clarke had invited her personally, and Abby was willing—ready—to talk to her daughter again, face to face, about something that wasn’t a medical emergency.

Marcus walked down to the field with Abby; Clarke had asked him, privately, to accompany her mother when they had their conversation, but refused to say why. They found Clarke sitting in front of the commander’s tent, talking in whispers with Bellamy on one side and Lexa on the other. She wore a dress in the _Trikru_ style, light fabric and loose draping, so Marcus didn’t immediately understand what the purpose of the meeting was. Lexa wore her _heda_ face, the one that betrayed no emotion; Bellamy looked nervous, or worried, though he was trying not to.

“Clarke,” Abby greeted.

“Hi, mom.” Clarke stood, and the whole purpose of Clarke’s special invitation revealed itself in all its moderately-rounded glory. Bellamy looked mortified; a flicker of something danced across Lexa’s face, although it might have just been shadows thrown by the firelight.

Marcus congratulated himself later on not reacting. Abby, for her part, was too stunned to react immediately. She let Clarke give her a hug, and when Clarke stepped back, Abby narrowed her eyes. “I wish you’d told me sooner,” Abby said. “I _am_ a physician.”

“Mom,” Clarke protested. “I’m fine.”

Abby huffed. “Well?”

Clarke bit her lip and nodded back toward Bellamy, who looked like he was dangling just above purgatory. Marcus knew what Abby thought of the boy who had shot Thelonius, but perhaps her opinion of him had changed some since the war. At any rate, she didn’t say anything about it. “If you need anything,” she told Clarke, “you know where I am.”

“Thank you, mom.”

“Just keep me updated. That’s all I ask.”

Clarke smiled—beamed, really. Marcus saw relief wash Bellamy’s expression clean, and Lexa’s gaze softened, although the rest of her expression remained steady. “Of course,” Clarke said.

Abby looked back at Marcus briefly. “We’ll let you get back to your party,” she said. She nodded to Lexa. “Commander.”

Lexa nodded in return. “Dr. Griffin. Marcus.”

Marcus returned the nod. “Commander.”

Abby walked away in search of some _Trikru_ summer wine, and then she and Marcus sat in a quiet bit of ground out of the way of the revelers but still in view of the commander’s tent. They sat in silence for a while, until Abby said, “I’m not old enough to be a grandmother.”

Marcus, who had made the mistake of drinking the moonshine too fast, said, “You’re as young as the dawn, Abby Griffin.” He hid a smirk behind his cup. “Still, this’ll be the first descendant of our people born on the ground. It’s more momentous than the first of our people born on the Ark.”

“She’s really not a kid any more.” Abby sighed. Before Marcus could remind her, she added, “I know you’ve said it a hundred times already, but now I _have_ to accept it.”

Marcus, who had made the mistake of not putting his cup down, put an arm around Abby. She leaned into him, almost certainly because she was heading past tipsy and into drunk. She was warm—everything was warm, but Abby especially—and he enjoyed the way she rested her head against his shoulder. She was staring into her drink, which was disappearing much too quickly for her liking, when Marcus caught Clarke’s eye across the way. He raised his cup toward her, and she did the same, smiling. Clarke leaned toward Lexa in her chair and murmured something; Lexa nodded, and said something in response, which made Clarke smile a little wider.

Abby was done with the festivities fairly quickly, and Marcus walked back to camp with her, carrying the flashlight and letting her lean heavily on him while she walked. He switched the lantern on in the medical tent so she could see to pull off her boots. When he turned to walk out, she stood in his way, arms crossed over her chest. “I’m onto you, Kane,” she spat.

“I—what?”

She moved toward him, forcing him backward across the tent. “Why don’t you tell me?”

He had no idea what she was talking about, and her sudden aggression was, frankly, a little terrifying. “Abby, I really don’t—“

“Or would you rather talk about that incident at the watering hole?”

He ran into the workbench and, with no small amount of horror, realized he had nowhere else to go. “Abby—“

“Why are you so damn nice all the time?”

Oh. _Oh_. He would have answered, except that Abby was standing toe-to-toe with him and he was having trouble remembering what the question was. He was having trouble remembering what breathing was, too. “Abby” was all he could manage, and even that came out in a stammer.

“Why do you do it?”

He wanted to do what he always did: say “Goodnight, Abby” and walk away, but she was blocking his only exit. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest like he’d just sprinted laps around camp. Abby’s hands hung at her sides now, and he grabbed them without thinking about it. He had no idea what he was going to do with those hands—push her away, maybe, or pull her closer—but she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his.

This time, there was no brevity, no hasty retreat. It was a kiss, real and proper, and Marcus let go of Abby’s hands so he could hold her instead. He would have been content just to kiss her lips, but she refused to let go, and when he got the stupid idea to deepen the kiss, she took the idea from him and ran with it. “Abby,” he murmured into her mouth, but she silenced him by dragging her nails down his spine. He shivered, and felt a hot, burning hunger run through him. When her fingers reached the end of his spine, they ducked under the hem of his shirt and drifted up again, pulling the shirt along with them.

 _Not like this_ , he thought. He was drunk. She was drunk, and probably roiling with emotion about Clarke. He was not the answer. _This_ was not the answer.

He drew his hands up to her shoulders and pushed her back, breaking contact to kiss her jaw and then her forehead. “Abby,” he said firmly.

She gave him a look he’d never seen in her before, full of hunger and demand. “What?” she growled.

He cupped her face in his hand, and that only made her gaze more intense. She knew what he was going to say—he could see it in the flickering change of her expression—and she didn’t let him say it.

“If you think I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said, moving forward and pressing him bodily against the table, “then you’re pretty damn stupid.” Her hands skated over his torso, crossing above his waistline and turning his insides to napalm. His hands had gone to the table when she moved toward him, and now he clung to it like a lifeline. She crouched, ghosting kisses over his skin, straight up his midline until she met with the fabric of his t-shirt. Her fingers brushed over his nipples when she pulled the shirt up, sending jolts of electricity through him as she tried to get the shirt over his head. He would have helped, except he was paralyzed by his conflicting interests. She growled his name in his ear, though, and that pretty much made the decision for him; he let go of the table just long enough to yank the shirt off over his head. She started again, this time trailing her fingers lightly upward until she got to his chest, where she resumed kissing his skin. By the time she got back to his mouth, he was simultaneously thankful for and seriously regretting his denim jeans.

When she finally stopped doing things to him that left him an incoherent mess and he remembered how to operate his limbs again, he started his own offensive, wrapping an arm around Abby and spinning them around so he could lift her onto the table. She resisted, though, and muttered something about her bunk. “Later,” he murmured, and then lifted the hem of her shirt and started kissing her skin, drawing a line up the center of her body the same way she had done for him. She yanked off her shirt of her own accord and shrugged out of the bra beneath it before he got to her sternum. He considered it a personal achievement that he was able to ignore her bare breasts as he kissed the sternum that lay between them, past the hollow at the top of her rib cage, up to her lips. Only then did he cup her breasts and draw work-roughened fingers over her nipples. Her own hands scraped at his shoulders, his neck, his scalp. He lifted her off the table, because hell if he was going to drag this out, not this time, and carried her to her bunk. It was smaller than he remembered, probably because now they were going to have to fit two bodies on it, but he was way past the point of giving a damn. He deposited her on the mattress and let go of her long enough to unlace his boots. Had he expected to be doing this, he might have taken his boots off sooner. She yanked on hers, too, until she could throw them and her socks into a corner of her little lean-to. When she yanked her jeans off, he followed her lead, and didn’t miss the way her eyes flicked to the tent that his erection was making of his underwear.

He didn’t bother with playing or teasing, partly because he didn’t want to play and partly because he didn’t want to suffer her wrath. He made short work of her panties and his underwear, and found her wet as rain and hot as summer. He tried to use his fingers first, to work her up, but she stopped him with a growled plea, and he obliged her, sinking into her and shivering despite the warm night air and the heat flooding his body. She drew a knee up and hooked her leg around his waist, pulling him closer, and he started beating out a rhythm. He deflected the hand she tried to put between them, and drew his own thumb over her clit in time with his tempo.

Her nails dug into his shoulders when she came, stifling the noise with his mouth, and she breathed his name into his lips as she rode the aftershocks down. He followed her, his fingers clutching at the bedding below her. He almost let out a cry, but her hand flew to his face, stopping him, and then he was kissing her over and over and over and muttering her name into her neck.

He had to stand up, get off the bed so she could untuck the covers, but then she made room for him on her small bunk and let him lay next to her and kiss her hair a dozen times. She hummed into his chest and draped an arm and a leg over him; he just lay under her, sated and content. When he realized he was drifting, he muttered, “Goodnight, Abby.”

“Goodnight, Marcus.”

He fell asleep before he said anything else.

* * *

Their routine fell by the wayside after that. It wasn’t really a secret, but they were always stealing kisses and sneaking off together, and he felt like a kid all wrapped up in hormones and hunger and  _her_ . Eventually, summer cooled into early autumn, and the first real harvest from Camp Jaha’s big garden came in on the same day Clarke went into labor. Marcus refused to let Abby walk through the forest by herself, but rather than deprive anyone in the camp of their first harvest meal, Marcus went with her himself.

Marcus could feel the tension in the dropship camp, the anticipation. Sky-born and Earth-born—Clarke’s people and Lexa’s people—all hung around the camp with an air of nervous waiting. Abby made a beeline for the dropship, but Marcus would have been utterly useless, so he searched the camp for Bellamy instead.

The poor boy was staring at the dropship with worry etched into his face. “How is she?” Bellamy asked the moment he saw Marcus.

“Clarke? I’m sure she’s fine,” Marcus said, as reassuringly as possible. “Abby knows what she’s doing.”

Bellamy swallowed nervously. “Right, yeah.”

Marcus smiled. “Anything I can do? Since I’m here.”

Bellamy collected himself and put Marcus to work alongside him, putting the final touches on the sheds that would hold the surplus from the harvest. They worked all day, Bellamy’s attention darting to the dropship whenever he thought he heard something. Fortunately, at least for Bellamy’s sanity, they were far enough away and it was loud enough in the camp that they couldn’t really hear anything that might have been happening in the dropship.

Raven bounced up late in the afternoon, her ponytail swinging. “Hey.” She looked at Bellamy. “Clarke wants to see you.”

He dropped the tools in a bucket and took off for the dropship without a word.

“And Abby’s wondering where the hell you went off to,” Raven added.

Raven headed for the cookfires for something to eat, and Marcus went to the dropship. Abby sat outside on the ramp. Marcus gave her a smile. “How’s Clarke?” he asked.

“She’s doing great.” Abby didn’t seem as happy as Marcus had thought she’d be.

“The first of a new generation,” he said. “Boy or girl?”

“A boy.” A smile grew involuntarily on Abby’s face. “He’s beautiful, too. Strong. Healthy.” She glanced back at the dropship, and then leaned into Marcus. “I’m a _grandmother_ , Marcus. Next thing you know, I’ll be complaining about my _knees_ or something.”

Marcus laughed a little and wrapped an arm around her, squeezing her shoulders. “Nah. You’re—what was it I said before?”

“‘As young as the dawn’, I think.”

Marcus snorted. “Not my best line, I’ll admit.”

“It wasn’t terrible,” she told him. “You keep saying things like that, and I might think you’re sweet on me.”

He gave her a soft smile and said, “Good. I wouldn’t want you getting the wrong idea.”

“Marcus—”

“What? Have I been too subtle?” It might have been wiser to stop talking then, to press his lips to her forehead and not say anything else, but he let out a little huff and said, in that quiet tone he had not used as often lately, “I love you. There. That’s about as un-subtle as I can get.”

Abby kissed him then, in front of all the kids—not that anyone was really paying attention to them.

“Abby—“

“What? Have I been too subtle?” she asked.

She kissed him before he said anything else.


End file.
